this happened to me in another car i drove before i got my satty and i used a shopvac i sat there for 30 min trying to get this lil frikin tube out and after 30 min i said forget it and then the next day i went to empty the thing out and sure enough there it was. So dont know how long it really took to get the thing out but my point is that the shop vac worked.

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I went ahead and had it towed to my mechanic. It was $10 for me, AAA picked up the rest.

When I got there, he "scoped" the intake manifold with his portable snap-on camera. Of course, the straw could not be found as it had already fallen in way too deep.

He suggested that since the straw was plastic, it would do little, if at all, any harm to the engine. My other mechanic buddy agreed. So, my mechanic loaned me some tools and I reassembled the throttle body and intake in his parking lot.

My mechanic went to start it up. It barely started. It started only when he held down the accelerator and cranked it for a long time. After about three tries and a lot of smoke, it stayed running. It ran just fine, actually. We left it idling for 20 minutes.

When I got in the car to leave, I was about to leave the parking lot and the car suddenly stalls. I tried to restart it five times without any success. It would crank and attempt to start, but did not. It sounded like it wasn't getting enough fuel or something. So I pushed it back into his shop and he gave it a few tries. No luck.

Then, he decided to start the engine as though it was flooded. Miraculously, that worked. Again, it smoked a lot, but it started and stayed running. He took the car down the street to pick up some parts and it worked just fine. No stalling. I drove it home (8 miles) and it was fine too. Went out to dinner tonight, and it's still running fine.

Thoughts?

...'10 Altima 3.5SR V6- 5k
'96 SL2- 150k!
'92 Previa- 99k

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This more common than you may think. Many, many years ago my brother did this on his Plymouth Acclaim. I called the manufacture of the carb cleaner and was informed that the little straw being ingested by the engine is taken into consideration during its design. It'll get broken, crushed and burnt into nothing.

Now if you shoved a handfull of them in there that would be a different story.

The reason you had a problem starting after all this is because you probably had pools of cleaner and gunk contaminating the A/F mixture.